The present invention relates generally to network communications and, more particularly, to selecting data channels to transmit data between different units of a network.
Modern motor vehicles typically have equipment such as a multimedia system. In addition to the traditional car radio, such multimedia systems can include a number of other units such as a cassette player, CD player, DVD player, television receiver, navigation system, screen, loudspeaker boxes, and a car telephone with hands-free equipment, to mention only a few examples. The commercially-available Media Oriented Systems Transport or Media Oriented Synchronous Transfer (MOST) network standard has been proposed to facilitate communications between equipment of a multimedia system implemented in motor vehicles such as cars, trucks, buses and the like. The multimedia equipment that can be linked together in such a network operate as data sources, data receivers or sinks and data transceivers. Data sources include, for example, car radios, CD players, video recorders, TV tuners, etc. Data sinks include, for example, an audio amplifier to which several loudspeakers are connected, and a display screen which displays an uncompressed video signal. A MOST network is commonly contemplated to be a ring network linking all units of the network to all other units. Generally, in addition to operating as data receivers or data sources, units of a MOST network can also operate as data transceivers, receiving and re-transmitting data on the network that is not addressed to the unit itself.
As the quantity of units linked to one another on a MOST network increases, so too does the demand for available data channels for transmitting data between the network units. However, there is an inherent limitation in the quantity of available data channels of a MOST network. Conventionally, while a data channel is assigned to a connection segment between two communicating network units, the data channel is unavailable to support other communications on the network. As the quantity of assigned data channels increases, the quantity of remaining data channels decreases, ultimately adversely impacting the efficiency of the network communications.
Therefore, there is a need for a technique that increases the quantity of data channels that are available for data transmission in a MOST network.